Tag: InternationalNews

{{Syrian dissidents have signed an “initial agreement” during talks in Qatar to form a new umbrella national coalition, according to an opposition official.}}

{{Attempts to find Arab-Israeli common ground on banning weapons of mass destruction from the Mideast have failed, and high-profile talks on the issue have been called off, diplomats said Saturday.}}

The two diplomats said the United States, one of the organizers, would likely make a formal announcement soon saying that with tensions in the region remaining high, “time is not opportune” for such a gathering.

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge the cancellation ahead of the formal announcement.

The meeting — to be held in Helsinki, Finland, by year’s end — was on shaky ground since it was agreed to in 2010 by the 189 member nations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Its key sponsors were the U.S., Russia and Britain, but they said such as meeting was only possible if all countries — especially Israel —agreed to attend.

The decision to postpone, if not to scrap it, will cast doubt on the significance of the NPT and its attempts every five years to advance nonproliferation. Any new attempt is unlikely until the NPT conference meets again in 2015.

Hopes for such a meeting were alive as recently as Tuesday, when Iran joined Arab nations in saying that it planned to attend, leaving Israel as the only undecided country.

Tehran’s announcement came at a Brussels seminar on a Mideast nuclear-free zone also attended by Israel and the Arab countries, and described as largely free of regional tensions.

But the two diplomats said the decision to call off the Helsinki meeting had already been made by the time Iran declared Tuesday that it would attend.

But a decision to give up on staging such a gathering after it was approved by the NPT is more than a reflection of Mideast realities.

It also is bound to weaken efforts at future NPT conferences to reconcile clashing visions of disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.

Daryl Kimball, head of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, warned that “an indefinite cancellation of the long-awaited conference on a Middle Eastern WMD-free zone will only worsen the proliferation risks in the future and undermine the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”

Iran, the Arab nations and most other developing countries say the emphasis should on the U.S. and other nuclear-armed states that are NPT members to disarm.

Such nations also castigate the West for supporting Israel and its widely suspected nuclear weapons program.

Washington and its allies say Iran, North Korea and Syria are the greatest proliferation threats, even though Tehran and Damascus deny allegations of secret nuclear activities linked to weapons.

The Arab proposal to create a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Mideast and to pressure Israel to give up its undeclared arsenal of perhaps 80 nuclear warheads, was endorsed by the 1995 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference but never acted on.

The conference meets every five years.

The two diplomats who spoke Saturday are from nations that were invited to the Helsinki meeting, which was to be open to all NPT-member nations.

The diplomats also are from member nations of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

While Syria’s civil war, nuclear tensions with Iran and other Mideast frictions will be cited as the official reason for the cancellation, one of the diplomats acknowledged that the decision is mainly being taken because Israel has decided not to attend.

The diplomat — from a Western nation sympathetic to Israel— said Arabs countries have refused to budge from positions that made it impossible for the Jewish state to participate.

Israel has long said that a full Arab-Israeli peace plan must precede any creation of a Mideast zone free of weapons of mass destruction.

The region’s Muslim neighbors in turn have asserted that Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal presents the greatest threat to peace in the region.

They insist that Israel declare its arsenal and join the NPT as part of any peace talks.

The diplomat said that while the announcement that the Helsinki meeting has been canceled might be made in the name of all three co-sponsors — the U.S, Russia and Britain — it would likely be delivered only by the United States, reflecting tensions between Moscow and Washington on the issue.

He said the Russians have opposed declaring the meeting dead at this point.

{{Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made an ominous threat against foreign intervention, saying it would have a “domino impact” on the world.}}

“I think that the cost of foreign invasion of Syria, if it happened, would be greater than one that the whole world can afford,” he told a Russia television Friday.

“Because if there were problems in Syria, particularly as we are the last bastion of secularism, stability and coexistence in the region, it will have a domino impact that will affect the world from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

“And you know its implications on the rest of the world. I do not think that the West is moving in this direction, but if they do, no one can predict what will happen after.”

President al-Assad said “I’m not a puppet, and I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country. I am Syrian, I was made in Syria and to live and die in Syria”.

{{The director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation stepped down Saturday amid controversy over a report that aired false claims by a sex abuse victim implicating a political figure of the 1980s.}}

“I have decided that the honorable thing to do is to step down from the post of director general,” a somber George Entwistle told reporters.

“When appointed to the role, with 23 years’ experience as a producer and leader of the BBC, I was confident the trustees had chosen the best candidate for the post,” he said.

“However, the wholly exceptional events of the past few weeks have led me to conclude that the BBC should appoint a new leader.”

Tim Davie, the director of BBC Audio & Music who was tapped to be CEO of BBC Worldwide, will serve as acting director general while a permanent replacement is sought. Entwistle had just two months on the job.

{{US President Barack Obama will this November become the first US president to visit Burma. The White House has revealed.}}

Obama will meet President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

It is part of a three-leg tour from 17 to 20 November that will also take in Thailand and Cambodia.

The government of Burma has begun implementing economic, political and other reforms, a process the Obama administration sought to encourage.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was previously the most senior US official to go to Burma when she visited in December 2011.

The trip is built around the summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Cambodia, which leaders from China, Japan and Russia will also attend.

In a statement, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr Obama intended to “speak to civil society to encourage Burma’s ongoing democratic transition”.

{{A 7.4-magnitude earthquake rocked Guatemala on Wednesday, killing at least 48 people in two states and leaving hundreds of others injured. Scores of people are still missing.}}

The quake, which hit at 10:35 a.m. in the midst of the work day, caused terror over an unusually wide area, with damage reported in all but one of Guatemala’s 22 states and shaking felt as far away as Mexico City, 600 miles (965 kilometers) to the northwest.

President Otto Perez Molina said at a news conference that 40 people died in the state of San Marcos and eight more were killed in the neighboring state of Quetzaltenango.

San Marcos, where more than 30 homes collapsed, bore the brunt of the temblor’s fury.

More than 300 people, including firefighters, policemen and villagers, tried to dig through a half ton of sand at a quarry in the commercial center of town in a desperate attempt to rescue seven people believed buried alive.

Among those under the sand was a 6-year-old boy who had accompanied his grandfather to work.

{{Preparing to hand over power after a decade in office, China’s President Hu Jintao called Thursday for sterner measures to combat official corruption that has stoked public anger while urging the Communist Party to maintain firm political control.}}

In a 90-minute speech opening a weeklong party congress to usher in new leaders for the coming decade, Hu cited many of the challenges China faces – a rich-poor gap, environmentally ruinous growth and the imbalanced development between prosperous cities and a struggling countryside.

Yet he offered little evidence of fresh thinking to address ways to reinvigorate a flagging economy and meet public demands for a more open government. Instead he outlined more of the piecemeal policy-making that has been the hallmark of his 10 years in power.

Only in addressing the rampant graft did he sound the alarm. Hu singled out party members, calling on them to be ethical and to rein in their family members, whose trading on their connections for money and lavish displays of wealth have deepened public cynicism about the party.

“Nobody is above the law,” Hu said to the applause of the 2,309 delegates and invited guests gathered in the Great Hall of the People, with his successor, Vice President Xi Jinping, and other party notables on the dais behind him.

{{The man behind the anti-Islam video blamed for sparking widespread protests in the Muslim world was jailed for a year Wednesday for breaching the terms of his probation for a previous offense.}}

Mark Basseley Youssef will serve the sentence in federal prison after he admitted four allegations of using false identities, violating the terms of his probation for a bank fraud conviction in 2010.

The 55-year-old was identified as the main man behind “Innocence of Muslims,” which triggered a wave of protests in September, and was initially blamed for an attack which killed the US ambassador to Libya.

In February 2009, a federal indictment accused Youssef and others of fraudulently obtaining the identities and Social Security numbers of customers at several Wells Fargo branches in California and withdrawing $860 from them.

He was arrested in September for eight probation violations. At a hearing last month he denied all counts, but on Wednesday he admitted to four, in return for the other four being set aside.

US. District Judge Christina A. Snyder said Youssef, who has already spent five weeks in custody, must spend 12 months behind bars, followed by four years of supervised release.

Youssef was previously listed as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and known as Sam Bacile when the protests about the video emerged.

The amateurish film depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a thuggish deviant offended many Muslims, and sparked a wave of anti-US protests that cost dozens of lives and saw mobs set US missions, schools and businesses ablaze.

It was also linked to the September 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in which US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Assistant US Attorney Robert Dugdale said Youssef had “betrayed” the actors involved in the “Innocence of Muslims,” by not telling them he was a “recently released convicted felon.”

The Egyptian-born Coptic Christian also deceived them by dubbing anti-Islamic dialogue over their lines after the movie was shot. “He made that choice for other people,” the prosecutor said.